Research on remanufacturing scheduling problem based on critical chain management

Remanufacturing is the recycling process of waste products as "as good as new products", compared with materials recycling, remanufacturing represents a higher form of recycling. The typical structure of remanufacturing system consists of three parts: disassembly workshop, remanufacturing workshop and assembly workshop. However, the management of production planning and control activities can differ greatly from management activities in traditional manufacturing. Scheduling in a remanufacturing environment is more complex and the scheduler must deal with more uncertainty than in a traditional manufacturing environment. In order to properly schedule in a remanufacturing environment the schedule must be able to cope with several complicating factors which increase variability. This paper introduced and discussed seven complicating characteristics that require significant changes in production planning and control activities, in order to provide a new method for remanufacturing production scheduling system.